


Photo Album

by belivaird_st



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 06:31:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14419608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belivaird_st/pseuds/belivaird_st
Summary: Carol pulls out her photo album and shares it with Therese during breakfast on an early Spring morning.





	Photo Album

**Author's Note:**

> Of course the childhood part of Carol is just pure imagination and the fact that this short story is set in the early seventies makes it a little more interesting... And how both women randomly end up living in Rhode Island...

Providence, Rhode Island, 1971

"This is me, at my first communion," Carol begins softly, tapping a long, slender finger over a faded, sepia-colored photograph of a small, squinty-eye blonde girl, wearing a billowy white church dress that practically hung over her saddle-shoe feet. Therese smiles with Carol standing behind her outside on the patio, leaning down over her shoulder. She likes how the child in the photograph keeps smiling through bright sunshine, no matter how much it blinds her. It looks like the girl's ready for the world!

"How old were you?" Therese asks.

"Seven," Carol replies. "What am I wearing? Looks more like a pillowcase than a dress!"

They snicker and share a pleasant laugh together before moving onto the next page. Lamented on the top half shows off a handsome, doting couple - the wife's elbow rests squarely down on the husband's left shoulder. The woman's light and fair features were in contrast with the man's dark, side-combed hair and mustache. 

"My parents," Carol sighs. "My mother was such a blonde goddess back then - including those eyebrows!"

"She looks like you, but you most definitely have your father's eyes," Therese murmurs.

"He died when I was still in my adolescent years, and my mother passed away right before Rindy was born," Carol explains.

"My parents are gone, too." Therese gazes at the picture below. There, she finds Carol, ten or eleven, sitting inside a wheelbarrow with two older looking boys standing on either side of her holding the wooden handles, buzz-cut shaven and dirty denim overalled. Carol looks like she's mid-laughing in the photo and her hair is worn in two braids. 

"Who are they?" Therese stares at the two, clownish guys.

"My cousins, Felix and James. They were more like brothers to me. James died in the war. And Felix got killed in a gang-fight," Carol explains. 

"Jeez Louise," Therese whispers. 

Carol turns the page over and Therese sees more of the squinty-eye girl growing up. Carol with her economics class, Carol with her sewing group, Carol and Harge on their wedding day. Therese stops and takes a good long look at this photo with the tall, several white layered wedding cake propped in front of Harge, in a suit, kissing Carol on the forehead, with her veil fallen over her soft, delicate face. Even in the picture, Therese can tell Carol doesn’t look happy, but more grim and bland, than expected. Still, she wants to know,

"What’s it like to get married?"

Carol hesitates. Then,

"It's like walking across a wooden plank on a pirate ship."

"Be serious, Carol," Therese huffs.

"Theres no other way for me to describe it, darling. The wedding felt like a traditional thing to do. Marriage was nothing special. Rindy's birth, however, was the highlight of it all..." Carol flips a couple of pages of pictures of Rindy as a baby: Carol helping her walk her first steps on the driveway in New Jersey, feeding her a jar of peaches in her highchair and giving her a bath in the tin metal basin over the kitchen sink.

"Can you believe she's old enough to drink now?" Carol clicks her tongue. "Yesterday it seemed like she was just singing the alphabet to me..."

Therese watches Carol close the photo album shut and lay it beside her napkin. Then Carol wraps Therese up with a quilted blanket before stepping back towards her empty chair across the glass table. They pick and start eating their breakfast quietly to themselves - spreading grape jelly on toast and forking up small cubes of cantaloupe and melon.

"Do you ever think, that maybe someday, we could have a wedding?" Therese says carefully.

Carol swallows and sets her cup of coffee down. "We don't need one, because we are still together as ever, am I right?" she watches Therese lower her gaze onto her plate of food and swirls maple syrup around with the edge of her fork. Carol leans back and closes her eyes behind her rimless pair of eyeglasses and listens to all kinds of wild exotic birds chirping away. Mornings had always been her favorite time of the day, unlike Therese, who could sleep for centuries if she wanted to. With the world still foggy with dew on blades of grass, and the sun not quite up, it was like stepping into another world - a far more serene, peaceful one.

Tears in her eyes, Therese crumples over the patio table and bawls, throwing Carol completely off-guard.

"My love, what is it?" Carol asks, breathlessly.

"I want to marry you, the same way Harge married you!" Therese sobs.

"He was drunk during most of the reception," Carol laughs. When Therese keeps sniffling, Carol blows out a kiss to her and speaks comfortingly,

"Marriage is so outdated these days, darling. Divorces are the new hip thing..."

"It's not fair," Therese responds.

"It's not, but that shouldn’t keep you from eating your eggs! Now gobble them all up and no more tears!"

Therese smiles sadly and picks up her fork. While she eats on, Carol takes a look at their garden they've managed to plant and grow all these years. She loved all her mixed flowers and ferns. A Monarch butterfly fluttered about before landing gently on one of her tulips.


End file.
